The House of Adriano

by Nerina Hilliard

  She thought that a tiny quirk of amusement turned up Duarte’s lips at that, but he answered gravely enough.

  “It is so long since I have been there, I think I may have forgotten the way.”

  “All right,” Peter replied agreeably - and slipped his hand into Duarte’s.

  Aileen thought he looked a little surprised, but not displeased, but then Peter had to add embarrassment to the little scene by putting out his other hand and grasping her own, so that they started to walk down the paved way that led to the pool like some married couple with the child between them.

  It was a distinctly disturbing thought, to link her with a man she did not even like, and she felt a flush rise to her cheeks as just a tiny suspicion was born in the back of her mind that disliking a person did not necessarily make one indifferent to him as a man.

  “Quite a domestic tableau,” Duarte remarked a little mockingly, as if the same thought had occurred to him as Peter grasped both their hands.

  "It’s just a habit he has,” she said, too quickly again. “He used to do the same thing with Paul.”

  The dark brows went up at that. “Paul?”

  Aileen could have bitten out her tongue for mentioning Paul. She had the feeling that he could be distinctly mocking about any man in her life, remembering the way he had once jeered at her for preferring a career to marriage.

  “Just somebody I used to know in Sydney,” she said evasively.

  “She means Uncle Paul,” Peter informed him gratuitously, and Aileen could cheerfully have gagged him.

  “Aunt Aileen and Uncle Paul,” Duarte said thoughtfully. There was a faint hint of derision in the glance he slanted at her, although his voice was apparently serious again as he glanced down at the boy. “But aunts and uncles are usually married.”

  “Oh, Uncle Paul wanted to marry her,” Peter told him casually. “He used to mend all my toys for me,” as if that was one of the requirements of anybody who should want to marry his Aunt Aileen.

  “Is this the fish pond?” Aileen asked in heartfelt relief, as they came in sight of a small ornamental pond. Anything to change the subject - and she had the idea that she had not heard the last of it.

  Peter nodded and broke from them, running on ahead to drape himself rather dangerously over the stonework surrounding it.

  “I’d better see that he doesn’t tip in,” Aileen said hastily, leaving Duarte behind and almost running after Peter. She could not have remained at his side in any circumstances at the moment.

  She caught hold of Peter and hauled him back, to make her excuse look reasonable, sternly holding on as he wriggled protestingly.

  “I won’t fall in - and I want to catch that spotted fish.”

  “He’ll die if you take him out of the water.”

  “I’m not going to take him out of the water,” he explained. “I just want to hold him for a moment,” whereupon he made a determined effort to get his small hand around the particular spotted fish in question, while Aileen held on to him just as determinedly and refused to look at Duarte to see what expression was on his face at the moment. However, after a moment a firm hand reached out and removed him from her grasp and set him up on the stonework.

  “You said you were going to show us the pool, not imitate a fishing rod,” he said with apparent sternness, but Peter did not seem to take the remark at its face value. He laughed up into that dark face that bore such a subtle resemblance to his own, but submitted to sitting on the stonework and only looking down into the pool, instead of trying to catch any of its occupants.

  “When is the tutor due to arrive?” Aileen asked. She already knew since Dona Teresa had told her, but it served as an innocuous remark to open the subject and keep away from anything personal.

  “He will be here on Monday,” which was four days away.

  Peter grimaced. “School again!” He shrugged with that almost adult mood Aileen was used to in him. “Still, I suppose it won’t be so bad, and I’d be a dead loss without it,” he added, the Australian slang term coming so oddly from his childish lips.

  For a moment Aileen had the satisfaction of seeing Duarte show a glimpse of surprise. The dark brows went up dryly.

  “I had not expected you to welcome the idea of it.”

  Peter shrugged again. “Didn’t say I liked it,” he corrected, still with that amusingly adult attitude. “But Auntie Aileen said you have to learn things sooner or later, so it’s best to get it over with early.”

  That dry glance slanted towards her this time. “Your ... Aunt Aileen seems to have a technique all her own.”

  He did not add to the remark, however, and Peter chose that moment to slide down off the stonework and go to investigate the statue of a seventeenth-century soldier that stood a short distance away. If she had been able to stop him leaving them with some legitimate excuse, Aileen would have gladly done so.

  “So this Paul of yours wanted to marry you,” Duarte’s voice remarked at her side, as she had been expecting and dreading.

  “Peter was imagining things,” she said in an attempt to deny it. “We used to live next door to each other and Peter would always run to him to mend his toys for him. I was never much good at that sort of thing. And ... and we used to go swimming together too.”

  “But never for moonlight walks?” That softly attractive voice had an undertone of mocking derision now. “That Paul of yours must surely have realised the value of such things to combat that prized career of yours.” His voice was most definitely mocking now. “Did he never pause with you in some garden where night flowers were scenting the air? Or walk along the beach in the moonlight, with the sound of the surf behind you?”

  “Since we both occupied little one-room flats, there was hardly any question of walking through flower gardens,” she retorted as dampeningly as she could.

  “True,” he conceded. “But there was always your famed Botanical Gardens - and the sea was very near to you.”

  “Is that how you would ask any girl to marry you?” she countered.

  It was a slightly dangerous counter-action, but he was not going to get away with everything his own way and, even if it did make him withdraw into that remote coolness, he could put on like a cloak whenever he chose, that might be better than having him pry too closely into her love life and jeer at her apparent lack of womanly emotions. She was not going to let him guess that she was every bit as feminine as any other girl. If he chose to think that she was a die-hard career girl and it irritated the species of masculine conceit that liked to imagine a woman’s only career was marriage, so much the better.

  However, he did not draw back into the cool mask she privately labelled his Conde de Marindos mood, as distinct and apart from the mocking derision he could hand out as Duarte Adriano.

  The broad shoulders, covered by expensive and perfectly tailored cloth, shrugged with bland ambiguity.

  “Perhaps,” he said in the same tone that his shrug had conveyed. “But we are not talking about Duarte Adriano.”

  No, he was in a mood instead that seemed determined to poke and pry among her emotions and make fun of them. How these latins loved to put out the idea that they knew everything there was to know about love and that other countries that did not put so much emphasis on the emotions were cold-blooded fishes! Not that she could ever imagine Duarte in the throes of any heady passion. Spanish or not, he seemed far too self-controlled.

  She shrugged herself. All right, if he wanted to take up that attitude, she could counter it.

  “The sea was very near to us,” she admitted, “but we only went there during the daytime. There was no need for any romantic walks. We were just friends.”

  “Ah - friends. That very elastic word that can mean so many things.”

  Her head tilted more challengingly than she realised. “Don’t you believe in friendship between a man and woman, senor?”

  “Sometimes it is possible - but when the girl is young and attractive, has blue eyes and very fair hai
r - no.”

  Aileen felt an odd weakness go through her, but she answered composedly enough.

  “If that is an oblique kind of compliment, senor - thank you.”

  The dark head inclined slightly. “It is natural to pay compliments to an attractive girl.” His eyes glinted with the same mocking amusement. “Did your Paul not think the same?”

  “We never indulged in compliments.”

  She was certainly not going to tell him that Paul had once said moonlight made her hair like silver and that, far from Paul being only just friendly, Peter had been quite right in saying that he had wanted to marry her. The first time he had asked her had when they were swimming together. It could hardly have been less romantic. True, her slim-fitting green swimsuit was most becoming, but she had also had rubber “flippers” on her feet and a glass-fronted diving mask over her face. They had both come up breathless and he had taken her not exactly by surprise by suddenly proposing to her.

  There must have been something reminiscent in her expression, something in her face that gave her away, because she suddenly realised that Duarte was watching her with a peculiarly searching gaze, but it was quickly overlaid by the familiar mockery as he in turn realised that she was aware of his gaze.

  “So he did want to marry you, but that so important career interfered.” He shook his head again. “It is a pity he could not have come to Spain.”

  “You think that would have made any difference?”

  That sardonic black brow jerked up. “He might have learned the value of our Spanish moonlight,” he retorted, his voice so very jibing that she could have hit him.

  “I think you overrate your Spanish moonlight.”

  “So? I think perhaps some time we must experiment.”

  She was not given a chance to ask him what he meant by that, because Peter chose to return to them at that moment, for which she was quite glad, since it was not a conversation she would willingly have chosen to continue. Duarte had the annoying knack of being able to counter just about anything she said, and she had the feeling that it was best not to investigate any ambiguous remarks too closely or she would find he was merely scoring off her again.

  Attractive or not - and there was no doubt that he was extremely attractive - he was also the most irritating person she had ever come across!

  Pablo Doran, the tutor, a remarkably shy and bespectacled young man, duly arrived, and Peter settled down to lessons. When he had his Spanish lessons Aileen joined him, which Peter found vastly intriguing and made no secret of it. At other times during the day Aileen found plenty of free time on her hands.

  She was not needed during the hours set aside for lessons, and some of the time she spent with Dona Teresa, who informally helped her with her Spanish vocabulary, both of them laughing over the mistakes she made. Sometimes it was hard to realise that the elder woman was Spanish, and on occasion Aileen had the feeling that Dona Teresa welcomed her presence. Even though, as she had said, she had tried to fit into the old ways again, it was obvious that her years away from them had irrevocably changed her, so that the more orthodox Manola could not discuss with her the very many subjects she wanted to discuss, anything from politics to what Aileen’s old home had been like during those days when she had been living in the country.

  “Some time you will see our country home,” Dona Teresa said on one occasion when they had been discussing the station Aileen’s father had once owned. “The Castillo is very different from this house.” She smiled, noticing Aileen’s interested glance. “We shall go there soon, I expect ... when it gets too hot. Duarte prefers to live there, since there is much to be seen to on the estate, but business matters occupy him also in Madrid. Too, there was the question of your arriving here. We thought it would be easier for you and Peter to come to a city first, rather than go straight into surroundings too different from what you had been used to.”

  Aileen could not help thinking, rather dryly, that she was finding enough difference in a city. The impact of the Castillo Marindos was apparently going to be very much more severe.

  “It is not that it is primitive,” Dona Teresa continued, and Aileen silently agreed that she could not imagine Duarte living in primitive surroundings, “but that it is rather isolated. There is the Castillo and the village, but nothing more. No large shops and cinemas, I am afraid.”

  Aileen smiled. “I used to live in surroundings like that when I was younger,” she said. “Not that I’m implying that the station was anything like the Castillo Marindos. I meant that I’m used to living in the country ... and being rather isolated.”

  “Ah, then you will not mind too much.” Dona Teresa even gave a little sigh of relief. “We thought that, as you had come from the cities, you would find it too boring and isolated at the Castillo.”

  Aileen shook her head. “To be quite truthful, I prefer living in the country.”

  “You ride?”

  “I used to.” She smiled reminiscently. “I used to have a pony of my own.”

  “Ah.” It was a small sound of satisfaction. “I must speak to Duarte and see that a suitable mount is arranged for you.”

  Before Aileen could comment on that, the old lady went on to talk about a small dinner party that was to be arranged. Apparently it was to be small for two reasons, a kind of semi-family introduction of Peter’s unofficial “aunt” and also to ensure that most of the people there would be able to speak English, so that there would not be too alien an atmosphere. The thought of meeting the type of people that the Adrianos moved among scared her, but she endeavoured to hide it from Dona Teresa, at the same time wondering who could have been responsible for so much consideration. Not Duarte, she was quite sure. It sounded far more as if the suggestion might have come from Dona Teresa herself.

  “Duarte suggested that it should be so,” Dona Teresa said, and completely astounded Aileen, who found herself quite unable to reconcile the new facets of Duarte’s complex personality with what she felt about him.

  He had taken Peter away from her, then almost disarmed her by his astounding proposal that she should come to Spain, not merely as an employee, but as a member of the family. True, that did have its disadvantages, but she had to admit there were many advantages also. She lived among luxury and was quite human enough to be able to appreciate it, and she was also able to purchase the sort of clothes she had once only dreamed about. How long such a situation would last she did not know, but she was content to live for the present.

  Now there was this further surprise, that he should arrange the sort of dinner party where she should not feel too uncomfortable among strangers whose language she could not speak - and that coming almost on top of his deliberate taunting of her this afternoon! She wished, quite sincerely, that he would make up his mind what type of person he was going to be, then she could in turn decide whether or not she could ever grow to like him.

  A few days after hearing about the projected dinner party, Dona Teresa suggested that they should visit one of Madrid’s exclusive gown salons. Aileen had not yet done any shopping in Madrid, since most of her clothes had been bought before she left Australia. She had spent far more on them than she would have done in the normal way, but as soon as her feet started to sink down into the soft grey pile of the luxurious carpet in Barengaria’s she realised that this was going to be vastly different - and different it was. The gowns shown took her breath away, so that she hardly knew what to choose, except that it should be something simple, but she need not have worried, because before she really knew what was happening Dona Teresa and Manola had, between them, chosen for her, but she could not disagree with their choice. It was white, with an almost demure neckline and yet a classical simplicity, with a single trail of silver leaves and silver roses on the skirt.

  Aileen came away from the place in a complete daze, without the least idea of what Dona Teresa or Manola might have purchased. It was only outside the salon that the pleasant daze was broken.

  The familiar cream-co
loured car that had brought them from Marindos was parked only a few feet away, but in the interval of leaving the salon and reaching the car, a man caught sight of them, paused abruptly and then inclined his head with deferential courtesy to Dona Teresa.

  “Buenos tardes, senora. It is a long time since we last met,” he added in English with a pronounced American accent.

  “Ah, Senor Renfrew.” Dona Teresa too lapsed into English. “It is indeed a long time since we last met.”

  She smiled as she introduced the young American, and Aileen decided that Barton Renfrew seemed to be a pleasant, easygoing man somewhere in his thirties, his hair almost as fair as her own and grey eyes that smiled as if he found her decidedly good to look upon.

  “We are about to return to Marindos,” Dona Teresa said. “May we take you anywhere on our way?”

  “Thank you, no,” he said with a smile. “But if I may, I would like to call at Marindos and renew our acquaintance. I expect to be over here some months this trip.”

  This time Aileen felt that she was most definitely included in that smiling glance, and Dona Teresa seemed to notice it too, because she gave a little chuckling laugh.

  “By all means. We shall be glad to see you.”

  They then returned to the car, Renfrew inclining his head again in that little salute, and the last Aileen saw of him was his lanky, loose-jointed form turning into one of the side streets.

  “A business acquaintance of Duarte’s,” Dona Teresa, remarked. “He comes from Texas.” She slanted a teasing little glance at Aileen. “I think his desire to renew our acquaintance may have received unexpected stimulation.”

  Aileen refused to rise to the bait and they returned to Marindos for afternoon refreshment, cups of chocolate and little sweet cakes. Manola remained with them during that time, of course, and the conversation seemed to Aileen to be rather insipid, possibly because Manola was a rather insipid sort of person herself. After a while Dona Teresa suggested, extremely solicitously, that she thought perhaps Manola looked a little tired, and the other woman who, as Aileen had already noticed during her short stay, added a touch of the hypochondriac to her other qualities, agreed quite readily that she had a headache and would perhaps benefit by lying in her room with closed shutters.